by Dr. Yong-Hwa Kim, Dr. B. Sugavanam, and Dr. Z. Csizer

Presented by Dr. Young-Hwa Kim

It is more than 50 years since the invention of DDT which came as a wonder chemical and it was one, for all the millions of lives it saved during the 40s, 50s and the 60s. Even today many developing countries for good or bad are still dependant on DDT. Along with DDT, mixtures of BHC also came as a savior to mankind against pest attack. Since then many more organochlorines were introduced over the post war period. Until the 70s most of these chemicals were manufactured in the industrialized world and then transfer of technology to Asian and Latin American countries made these chemicals part of regular use in agricultural and public health outlets. Despite the introduction of new alternatives and banning and or restricting the use of these chemicals many developing countries in Asia and Africa still rely on DDT and BHC due to cheapness and lack of availability of other alternatives. Table 1 gives the production figure in India over the last five years. In certain years India has also imported DDT to meet the local demand.

Total of

DDT, BHC and 40,444 38,971 35,500 37,300 35,300

Endosulfan

Apart from actual production, large amounts of unused organochlorines are still stored under bad conditions in many developing countries. Some countries still produce lindane, which is one of the best pesticides in seed dressing and use in other crops such as cocoa and in fumigation. For every gram of pure lindane produced around five to six grams of toxic byproducts are produced. These are normally stored, or converted to some other aromatic products or illegally disposed of and pose a threat. Use of DDT for the manufacture of dicofol is also a source of DDT coming from impure materials.

The situation with respect to industrial chemicals such as PCBs is clearer. Most of it is produced in developed countries for use in transformers and capacitors. Normal disposal, accidents and damage due to war have been the major problems of PCBs contamination.

Having been discovered as trace contaminants of chemical production, dioxins and furans are one of the most controversial classes of chemicals of concern in terms of toxicity manifestation and technical difficulties to detect, to eliminate, and to minimize the amount contaminated or to be introduced into the environment.

It is our general understanding that all problems centered on POPs are in the hands of the developing countries.

In this presentation, we would like to summarize the past and on-going activities of UNIDO for the developing countries and to recommend action plans to mobilize the capabilities of UNIDO in cooperation with other international organizations for the resolution of the global issue of POPs.

Taking a global action over the control of POPs is a recent one. Therefore, it is worthwhile reviewing the existing action plans, which were suggested on the basis of extensive search for existing data on POPs. There are two documents currently available:

The major concepts or actions suggested in those documents could be summarized in the following table.

It is evident that conceptual scheme has been discussed at international level, but not about the substantive approaches for the global action on POPs. However, it is important to summarize the essential criteria for the successful plan towards global action from these conceptual suggestions. The essential criteria or components are:

Of course, these criteria are not only applicable to general pollution problems and pollutants, but also to POPs. Without taking into account of all those aspects, any global action on POPs might not work well.

Constraints of the Developing Countries to Manage POPs

When we look at the process for control of POPs in the developed countries, a series of events and establishment of infrastructure are a necessity: monitoring of the chemicals, effect of the chemicals on human and the environment, awareness of the public, actions by the governments, reactions of the industry, technical remediation, and preventive measures. It took two to three decades to take effective action after convincing all sectors of the society in the developed country regarding chemicals of concern. The global actions might try to shorten the periods, but we should be careful to apply a balanced measure to developing country to make it sustainable.

In contrast to the rapid introduction of chemicals, and incidences and contamination of environment by chemicals in the developing countries, they do not have the infrastructure to manage these chemicals safely in human health and environmental integrity terms.

1. Government:

• no environmental laws and regulations adopted.
• no detailed implementation scheme for chemical management.
• limited capability to evaluate diversified chemicals and technology to meet countries site specific needs.
• no preventive and emergency procedures for chemicals.
• not prepared to adopt risk assessment and management which discloses decision making and transparency .
• accidents not investigated in technical terms and no lessons learned to prevent future accidents.
• no manpower and equipment to monitor and remediate polluted sites.
• no mechanism to evaluate chemicals imported into the country.
• no proper documentation of pollutants released and transferred within the country.

1. Industry:

• no capability to cope with general environmental problems.
• limited resources in man-power and equipment to monitor and manage pollutants.
• no sense of 'responsible care' or life-cycle management of the products.

1. Public:

• no substantive experience of chemical hazards.
• limited information on long-term hazards of chemicals.
• ignorant of safety in dealing with chemicals.
• hypersensitive reaction to reports of presence of toxic substances in food or water.

1. Coordination among sectors:

• no consensus on risk management among sectors.
• limited coordination among ministries and agencies, and even departments.
• limited coordination among different academic disciplines concerned with chemical safety.

In this regard, the role of scientific community, which is constituted by research institutions and academia, is critical in moderating the opinions of the society and requires that the risk management and chemical management is environmentally sound. However, manpower and facilities of research institutions and academic centres in developing countries are not advanced to such a stage to enable the mission to be executed successfully.

Efforts of the international organizations on safe management of chemicals have been centered on risk assessment and monitoring. However, risk assessment is concerned mainly with human health and national resource aspect and monitoring has covered only global trend on a limited number of chemicals. Therefore, these activities are far from the issues of site specific, national specific and imminent problems of the government, industry and public in developing countries.

Several reviews have dealt mainly with the constraints of the public and the government in developing countries. We would like to point out some constraints faced by industrial or manufacturing sectors of the developing countries. As far as we understand, the production process of POP is relatively easy and/or the process consumes domestically produced raw materials or intermediates. This might be one of the reasons why POPs products are cheap. Easy to produce means economic feasibility to secure capacity to produce in the developing country and supply to domestic users. Now, the global movement to phase-out the POPs compounds based on the issues of seemingly remote contamination and impact of polar bears and seals could not be a priority reason to shut down chemical plants that have become a national asset. In this regard, we should consider two major constraints: awareness of the POPs problem in global perspectives is somewhat remote to developing countries and the phase-out of POPs is possible in sacrificing the costly construction costs invested by the developing country. Without taking into account these two constraints, risk assessment and management of POPs might not work.

UNIDO's Strategy for Dealing with POPs.

Analyzing the situation of POPs, the most important aspect is capacity building in developing countries. This could be done in three stages: Up-stream, mid -stream and down -stream capacity building.

Up stream:

• Analysis of existing data and updating of data on use, production, export and import of POPs.
• How much is stored and waiting for disposal in different countries?

• Legislative measures for dealing with POPS (PIC procedure, time bound phasing out, incentives to move to safer products, environment tax etc).
• Prioritization of activities.
• Setting up of coordination mechanism.
• Promoting national and regional networking.

Mid stream:

• Standardization.
• Staff trained in implementation of rules and regulation.
• Implementation of legislative measures.

Down Stream:

• Establishment of physical facilities with trained personnel.
• Carrying at the field level monitoring activities needed to contain/eliminate POPs along with other chemicals of concern.
• How much of POPs is in the environment as compound per se and major toxic/persistent metabolites.
• What is the rate of disappearance in many tropical countries

- Leaching (ground and surface water contamination)

- Breakdown (to what ?)

• Action taken to contain/ decontaminate POPs
• Disposal options for POPs lying in storage.
• Transfer of technology for alternative methods or substitutes
• Continuous support for sustainability of the programme.

These points are more elaborated in connection with the constraints and possible cooperation with other international organizations in the following table.

1.Policy

-Law Advisory assistance Ö UNEP

-Enforcement UNEP

2.Data gap

-Production Survey Ö Ö Ö UNDP

-Use Survey Ö Ö UNDP, FAO

-Storage Survey Ö Ö Ö UNDP

-Contamination Monitoring Ö Ö Ö UNEP

-Effect Human and Eco Monitoring Ö Ö WHO, UNEP

3. Mitigation of POPs

-Economic

Users Supply economic alternative Ö Ö Ö

Manufacturer Technical assistance Ö Ö Ö UNDP

-Awareness

Users Training Ö Ö FAO/WHO

Government Training Ö Ö FAO

Industry Training Ö Ö Ö

-Technical difficulty

to alternatives Search alternatives Ö Ö Ö FAO

Manufacturing Ö Ö Ö

4. Treat or disposal of POPs

-Technical difficulty Build treatment facility Ö UNECE

or transport to other country UNEP

5. Remedy

-Technical difficulty Hazardous waste treatment Ö Ö UNECE

Soil,sediment remediation Ö Ö

tech.

6. Exemption

-Selection criteria Efficacy and risk analysis Ö WHO/FAO

-Emergency

production Strategy of manufacturing Ö

Capacity building is a major activity of UNIDO technical cooperation programme and many of the activities mentioned above could be incorporated in to existing projects and similar could be extended to other countries subject to availability of funds. We would like to list several past and on-going projects on chemical safety, which are related to the POPs action plan in the near future.

It is a regional project mainly intended to promote risk reduction in agrochmeicals development in the Asia and the Pacific region. There are 15 member countries all of which, at one time or another have used POPs in agriculture and public health outlets. There is already enough information in the region related to POPs production, use and breakdown in the environment. For upstream and mid stream capacity building RENPAP could play a major role in the region. In fact it already carried out workshops on impurities such as DDT in dicofol, waste disposal, and has been advocating for years on the phasing out of chemicals of concern including POPs. It definitely catalyzed the government of the Philippines in phasing out certain chemicals of concern and in India recently the Government has taken a decision to phase out production of BHC which is produced at annual rate of 30,000 tones.

UNIDO is in the process of setting up a network for the Afro-Arab region for Risk reduction in the development of Agrochemcial in the region. POP issue could be added for regional awareness and start up activities. Such national network will automatically lead to national programmes where we could develop downstream activities for national capacity building.

It is rather difficult to assess this in a quantitative manner in war affected areas. UNIDO during 1994 undertook a survey of war affected Croatia and submitted a report that covered PCB contamination, among other things, due to the destruction of power plants.

The findings of the report is attached as an annex to this document. Similar studies are needed in countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovena, Iraq etc. In addition one has to look into the military sites in Central and east European countries made redundant during the post-cold war changes.

Another aspect that should be taken into consideration is the decommissioning of many BHC and DDT plants where the soil has been contaminated with persistent organochlorines and depending upon the nature of the site such as close to residential area should be taken.

The chemical and allied industries are rapidly emerging as a key sector of economic development in developing countries. Their sustained development has been often hampered by generation of significant amount of toxic and hazardous wastes and waste water, especially of persistent organic pollutants. Persistent organic pollutants, by definition, are resistant to degradation in the environment. The resistance of the chemicals makes them survive in the popular biological treatment in the industrial and public sectors and eventually cause serious environmental problems. This is more evident in the developing countries with inappropriate infrastructure and capabilities to treat wastes generated by the chemical and allied industries.

The project was undertaken as a case study for demonstration to build a capacity to overcome those industrial constraints caused by persistent organic pollutants, in particular chlorophenol wastes generated from several pharmaceutical industries. Major components of the study were:

• to review the industry.
• to review its associated pollution problems.
• to review current methods used to treat the waste stream.
• to evaluate current technical expertise available in the country.
• to give technical assistance for initiation of biological treatment of organic pollutants.

The technical assistance consisted of:

The project emphasized the capacity building of a local research institute so that the institute will be able to rapidly transfer the know-how and expertise to industry. The expected spin-off benefits are to stimulate the capability in fermentation technology, bioprocessing, biotechnology, and soil and groundwater remediation programmes.

The death of enormous quantities of fish in streams, rivers, lakes and on seashores have frequently been observed in developing countries without definite conclusions as to the cause. The general public put the blame on chemicals and their allied industries without any proof. Scientists report the extinction of certain species from anthropogenic activities in aquatic and terrestrial compartments. Chemicals are assumed to be one of the major causes of the decline, however, without solid proof of association.

Realizing the importance of early warning and preventive measures in handling chemical incidences and long-term effects of chemicals, UNIDO supported establishment of a Toxicology Center in the Republic of Korea in cooperation with UNDP and WHO in 1985-1987. An Ecotoxicology Center is under establishment in Pakistan with financial support of the Danish Government. In Kuwait, a project on Ecotoxicology and Marine Ecology Studies in Kuwait is under implementation with support of UNDP. Consultants, training, workshop and minimal equipment supply were major means of implementation.

The environmental toxicology research team in the Toxicology Center of the Republic of Korea is functioning as a facility 'par excellence’ in providing services on ecotoxicological testing and related research and also research for the government and industry. Staff are serving as advisers to the government and industry and resource persons for training in registration and management of chemicals.

The major areas of specialty for these countries are:

This expertise of each country may be linked to global transfer of technology to neighbouring developing countries in the field.

The technical assistance consists of:

Primary reliance on end-of-pipe pollution abatement has been the basis for industrial environmental management in most developed countries during the past twenty-five years. Although it has been effective for reducing pollution form major sources and in many situations was the only option to meet environmental goals, it has also been a financially expensive approach and not completely effective for reducing pollution from minor sources. Now the more progressive developed countries and industries in those countries are calling for cleaner production as the first priority in the reduction of pollution.

NCPCs were intended to act as a coordinating and catalytic body for cleaner production by providing policy advice on environmental management, supporting demonstrations of cleaner production techniques and technologies, training industry and government professionals. Presently, NCPCs in 8 developing countries are under operation with the technical support of UNIDO.

6. Water Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation in the Gulf of Guinea Large Marine Ecosystem (GOG - LME)

UNIDO is currently implementing a project dealing with the conservation of the Large Marine Ecosystem that needs a multidisciplinary approach. The project is supported financially by GEF/UNDP and technically by NOAA of U.S.A.

The productivity and biomass yields of the near-coastal areas of the Gulf of Guinea LME are dependent on land drainage, river floods, and turbulent diffusion. The more offshore waters are under the influence of seasonal upwelling of nutrients. The health and economic vitality of the near-shore regions are at risk from growing problems of coastal pollution, habitat degradation, and losses of fishery species due to growing contamination of coastal nursery areas of both coastal and offshore species.

The countries bordering the Gulf are mainly agricultural, although industry (in some cases petroleum industry) plays an increasingly important role in economic development and in the economic welfare of the people. Industry is a major contributor to environmental degradation in the subregion.

Manufacturing industries established over the years generate various sorts of waste. The bulk of such waste is not treated due to a lack of treatment facilities. In particular, agro-based industries (e.g. textiles, rubber, wood, vegetable oil, tanneries, etc.), the majority of which are located along the coastal areas and in the urban centres, are all generating, depositing/emitting diverse wastes and pollutants. Gaseous byproducts, liquid waste and hazardous solid wastes all contribute to soil contamination and water pollution, thereby posing a threat to the water supply system and the safety of drinking water. All these factors invariably threaten the achievement of the objective of "Health for all by the year 2000".

With the growing awareness in many developing countries of the potential environmental impact of industrial growth and urbanization, the need for environmental protection and resource conservation policies and programmes has become increasingly urgent. However, in the developing countries, including the countries surrounding the Gulf of Guinea, even the basic minimum industrial pollution control measures are lacking. Pronounced public policy involvement is thus essential to formulate appropriate environmental standards, ensure their enforcement, and devise longer-term solutions to environmental problems.

At present, there is hardly any exchange of information on the results of the monitoring of the local environment by these institutions. Consequently, an overall picture of the state of the environment of the Gulf of Guinea as an integrated ecological system is lacking.

Without reliable and up-to-date information on the state of this ecosystem available on a regular basis through a network of ongoing monitoring activities, the foundation for sound environmental management decisions will be missing. No rational management decisions will be possible, whether in response to early warnings of the onset of serious environmental degradation in specific areas, or in formulating appropriate management strategies or rehabilitation and protection plans. Nor will it be possible to assess the degree of effectiveness of such actions through reliable and timely feedback information on the impacts of specific remedial or protective actions.

For this basic need to be met, and as a basis for sustainable industrial and urban development in the countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea, the project is to achieve the five objectives:

Based on our brief analysis of the POPs status, previous action plans, and work experiences of UNIDO on chemical safety, we would like to propose two major action plans that require global cooperation.

We should like to propose that a cooperative demonstration program on the cause and effect of POPs in developing countries to resolve the awareness of the POPs issues in the regions, as well as a capacity-building program on risk-cost-benefit analysis for POPs by decision-makers to resolve the socio-economic aspect of the issues in developing countries, should be part of the initial action plan of the global approach to the POPs issues. Most of the past, on-going, and pipeline projects of UNIDO regarding chemical safety might be instrumental for successful completion of the programs only by focusing on POPs.

This proposal is intended to stimulate the awareness of the developing countries on the significance of POPs issues for the country or the region. Major component of the project should cover the following technical aspects:

• Chemical and biological monitoring of POPs.
• Risk assessment of the identified POPs to human and the ecosystem.
• Cost-benefit analysis of the POPs.

• Technological feasibility study for alternatives.
• Management of the POPs with inputs of all sectors.

Technical assistance on the chemical and biological analysis could be available from the technical expertise of the survey team to the Arctic. This project may support to conclude the controversy on the ecological effect of some POPs. We can either mobilize the existing global projects for POPs or to generate a new program using the model of GOG-LME and the project of the ecotoxicology center.

One of the technical constraints of the developing countries is to eliminate/minimize POPs at the generation or production stage, to eliminate the existing residual stocks of POPs, and to eliminate POPs at the contaminated sites. Technologies involved in the program would be:

These environmental technologies are well developed and practiced in developed countries. However, specific applications of the technologies to POPs are quite limited, but under active development. Transfer of the technologies to the developing countries should be one of the priorities for the global action.

Major tasks of the project should be consisted of:

It was intended in this presentation to summarize the constraints faced by the developing countries on reduction of risks of POPs and the UNIDO activities which could be mobilized to resolve the socio-economic and technical aspect of the issue. It was stressed that awareness of the POPs issue by the developing countries themselves and transfer of feasible technology to the developing countries are essential. The two UNIDO proposals to solve the constraints need cooperation among sectors of the country, ministries, nations, and international organizations, because of the complex nature of the problem and the approaches.